Vox Day is pulling the plug on his WorldNetDaily column, and he uses his final column to declare it a failure:

Given that my primary goal in writing this column was to convince the American people to aggressively defend their God-given, Constitution-guaranteed liberties, I have to conclude that the most honest way to describe it is 11 years of unmitigated failure. I’m not ashamed of that, nor do I consider the effort wasted. But, at the end of the day, American freedom has been yielded.

Day's definition of "freedom" is notably lacking when it involves women. He doesn't like that women can vote, considers women's rights "a disease that should be eradicated," and has warned men not to marry "career" women because they have a bad habit of having their own thoughts. He has also endorsed the lament that marriage no longer means "an expectation of regular sex" for men.

Let me be clear and assure everyone that I have joined neither the IMF nor a revolutionary militia. I have simply reached a point in my life where I wish to focus my writing on novels such as “A Throne of Bones” rather than political commentary. And I am deeply appreciative of Joseph and Elizabeth Farah, WND and the commentary editors for permitting me to write so freely on these pages for so long.

As the title suggests, Day's book is an apparent attempt to ride the "Game of Thrones" bandwagon.

And Day manages to end his column without telling his readers who he really is: Theodore Beale, son of former WND financial backer (and current convicted felon) Robert Beale.

Nobody believes WorldNetDaily these days, so WND must take affirmations of its so-called reporting where it can get it. Thus, we have a Dec. 31 WND article trumpeting how some website nobody's ever heard of is proclaiming WND to be "trustworthy." No, really:

An independent news organization has named the Drudge Report and WND among the “most trustworthy news sources” for 2012, citing Drudge as the “top-trusted site for millions” and WND for “continual commitment to the truth and top-notch journalistic practice.”

The list of the top news sources, where WND was second only to the Drudge Report, was announced today by the Discerning Times at Enumclaw.com, an online source that bills itself as a “Small Town Newspaper, Big Time News.”

The Christian organization said it based its decision on several factors, including the news reported “results from the fullest research possible” and that news “will be reported without favoritism.”

Other factors include an emphasis on beneficial news, the appropriate use of photographs “with due consideration for personal dignity” and that “no specific political viewpoint will be represented.”

The Times noted that candidates were evaluated on reliability, accuracy, quality, balance and reach. Those factors represent concerns for “consistent, regularly updated delivery of news,” “well-rounded stories which focus upon facts rather than gossip or hearsay,” “informative, well-written pieces over sheer quantity,” “stories reported aside from bias or agenda” and “strong authority and readership.”

“With a continual commitment to the truth and top-notch journalistic practices, WorldNetDaily has time and again exposed corruption in the media and politics while maintaining good journalistic practices,” the evaluation concluded. “WND clearly differentiates when they’re reporting news and providing commentary or opinion.”

Not only does the Discerning Times, aka Enumclaw, appear to be not terribly discerning, they apparently have never read WND.

WND maintains "good journalistic practices"? Really? If it was, it would have reported that Jerome Corsi's birther conspiracies have been repeatedly discredited. But it hasn't.

"Continual commitment to the truth"? When WND's own editor can't stop telling lies, you know what a wildly inaccurate statement that is.

"Differentiates when they’re reporting news and providing commentary or opinion"? When you're reporting only one side of a story, as WND frequently does, isn't that the same as erasing the dividing line between news and opinion?

Then again, the Discerning Times also has an article its website asking the question "Is Starbucks A Cult?" So, yeah, not exactly the most qualified to determine the trustworthiness of news sources.

Jeffrey Meyer devotes a Dec. 28 NewsBusters post to complaining about "Al Sharpton's 'Revvie Awards' where Democrats were honored and Republicans skewered for an hour on Wednesday night." He goes on to grouse: "Plenty of ridiculous titles were heaped on Republicans, including the 'This Dud's For You' award, the 'Empty Chair' award, and the 'Blueberry Pie Lifetime Achievement' award."

Meyer has apparently never read his employer's website, which includes the following categories for its year-end "Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting":

The Throwing Granny Off a Cliff Award

The Obamagasm Award

The Ku Klux Con Job Award

Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award

The Audacity of Dopes Award

The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity

Are those really any less ridiculous than what Sharpton came up with? In fact, one could say that Sharpton was taking notes on award names from the MRC.

Perhaps Meyer can do a comparison of the two and inform us which is the more riduclous.

There are many reasons nobody believes WorldNetDaily, and one of them is its penchant for silly one-world-government fearmongering. Take, for instance, its recent three-article series about smart meters from electric utilities.

Steve Elwart kicked off the first article in the series by complaining about cost, asserting that "a smart meter program may take decades before it pays for itself." Elwart let no electric utility representative respond to the charge. Elwart also warned of nebulous "other purposes" for which utilities can use the information gathered from smart meters.

Elwart's second article highlighted "The potential danger to the physical health of a homeowner," citing cases in which a smart meter caught fire. Again, Elwart failed to allow any utility company to respond to the criticism.

Elwart's final article cranks up the fear to warn around purportedly dangerous radio waves emanating from the meters:

Smart meters have been associated with privacy issues, data security issues, and fire safety issues, but the biggest danger from RF (radio frequency) meters may be from the signals they give off while reporting their data to the central utility office.

A study conducted by the industry group, the Electric Power Research Institute, concluded that in their tests the radio frequency emissions of smart meters are well within federal safety guidelines. A Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) study titled, “Summary Discussion of RF Fields and the PG&E SmartMeter™ System” concluded that smart meters are “are in full compliance with Federal Communications Commission regulations by a very wide margin.”

But are they? Many people would disagree.

Of course, Elwart does not cite "many people," only a few. And he fails once more to allow any utility representative to respond to his fearmongering.

WorldNetDaily had a massivecase of John Roberts Derangement Syndrome when the chief justice cast the deciding vote in favor of the constitutionality of President Obama's health care reform. WND has decided to relive that derangement by giving Roberts its "Benedict Arnold Award," as described in a Dec. 26 article:

He single-handedly delivered the swing vote to approve Obamacare and perhaps even crushed the American health system that has been the envy of the world.

“There are lots of bad guys out there who would qualify as ‘Villain of the Year,’ but precious few candidates for the ‘Benedict Arnold Award,’” explained WND Vice President and Managing Editor David Kupelian. “Benedict Arnold, after all, was a good guy; he was an American general in the Revolutionary War who fought valiantly on behalf of the Continental Army – that is, until, for reasons yet unknown, he defected to the British side and betrayed the cause he had formerly served.”

Kupelian added, “That pretty much describes Justice Roberts, who gained the enthusiastic support of conservatives and other Constitution-lovers by virtue of his earlier rulings and judicial temperament, and yet betrayed that trust in a devastating way. And we still don’t know why he did it.”

Kupelian apparently didn't read Roberts' ruling, in which he explained his reasoning.

Colin Flaherty begins his latest race-baiting article at WorldNetDaily by asserting, "People who say racial violence is 'random' either do not know what the word means, or they are not telling the truth."

Of course, Flaherty doesn't know what the word means either. He has been touting an "epidemic of hundreds of cases of black mob violence," as if all crimes committed by two or more blacks were committed by a "mob" and all crimes committed by blacks against whites are "racial" -- as he has been doing for months at WND.

After detailing the latest bit of "black mob violence" he's obsessing over, Flaherty asserts: "If race had no role in this crime, the chances of four black people randomly gathering and randomly selecting a white person are estimated at 1.7 out of 10,000." Flaherty does not explain how he concocted such a statistic.

The way normal people like police define "random" is a single isolated crime . Flaherty has invented his own meaning to suggest that all blacks nationwide are actively conspiring to rob and murder white people, which he must know is not true.

NewsBusters has been a bit obsessed over NBC's David Gregory displaying a high-capacity magazine for an assault rifle during a recent edition of "Meet the Press," in apparent violation of law in Washington, D.C, where the show is taped:

Tom Blumer wrote that "it would also be interesting to know if Gregory's possession of an AR-15 magazine or his showing it on the air violated any of NBC's corporate policies." He later chortled that Gregory "is under investigation by the Washington, DC Metro Police in connection with his apparent brandishing" of the magazine.

Blumer later discussed "the latest turns of events in the David Gregory Meet the Press magazine brandishing incident."

Matt Hadro complained that Howard Kurtz came to Gregory's defense over the "stunt."

But there has been no mention at NewsBusters or any other Media Research Center website of a Washington Post story about rampant infighting at the right-wing group FreedomWorks. The article begins with an account of how FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey entered the offices with a gun-wielding assistant with the goal of taking control of the group:

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

Gregory brought only a magazine without a gun attached. Armey brought an actual guy with an actual gun. And the MRC is more concerned about Gregorty? Shouldn't they also be asking if Armey violated the law as well?

(Armey has denied knowing that his assistant had a gun on him, and that if he did, it was concealed.)

The MRC giving a pass to a right-wing activist for possible gun violations while bashing a non-conservative for committing a less henious offense is par for the course. Remember that MRC chief Brent Bozell couldn't be bothered to offer any substantive criticism of Rush Limbaugh's misogynistic tirades and even launched an "I Stand With Rush" website in response to the criticism he was afraid to make.

Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily named its "lie of the year." Apparently, WND's own reporting wasn't eligible for the award, because things like repeatedly asserting that the Constitution states that only persons born to two citizen parents are "natural born citizens" would certainly qualify.

WND's Jerome Corsi has turned in an Dec. 27 article that will surely be a finalist for next year's award that is sadly too late for this year's contest. He begins:

Barack Obama has overruled the wish of the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to name a Japanese-American congresswoman as his Senate successor, choosing instead to reward a Hawaii ally who played a key role in sidestepping Obama’s birth certificate controversy to certify him for the Hawaii presidential ballot in 2008.

Two things are wrong with that paragraph:

1) Obama does not appoint senators to fill out an unexpired term; governors do -- in this case, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

2) Corsi provides no evidence whatsoever that Obama played any role in Abercrombie's appointment of his lieutenant governor, Brian Schatz, to fill out Inouye's term. After noting that Inouye's "deathbed" wish was that U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa be his successor, Corsi writes:

Everything seemed in place for Hanabusa until Obama decided to take the family to Hawaii for Christmas.

“We have a death-bed wish from a senator that is about the 30th person to lie in state at the Capitol. I think chances of that not happening are slim to none,” John Hart, chairman of Hawaii Pacific University’s Communications Department, told the Hawaii television station.

When Hawaii’s Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz flew back to Washington, there was no doubt Abercrombie succumbed to the wishes of Obama in making the final determination of Inouye’s successor.

That's it. Obama vacationed in Hawaii, and somehow that forced Abercrombie to appoint Schatz. Corsi provides no evidence that Obama had any contact whatsover with Abercrombie or anyone else regarding Inouye's seat.

Corsi is simply making stuff up -- or, to put it less charitably, he's lying. There's still time for WND to pick a new "lie of the year" -- the year's not over yet, after all.

This year's MRC "Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting" includes "The True But False Award for Fatuous Fact Checking." The winner was MSNBC's Martin Bashir, who is quoted as saying that "more people were collecting food stamps under George W. Bush than are under President Obama." The MRC responds: "In fact, U.S. Department of Agriculture showed more than 46 million Americans on food stamps at the end of 2011, a figure 40 percent greater than the highest number of recipients recorded during the Bush years (31.98 million, in January 2009)."

The statistic Bashir was citing actually involved the number of people added to the food stamp rolls under Bush and Obama as of the time Bashir said it -- as FactCheck.org confirms -- but he erroneously referred instead to the total number of recipients. The MRC makes no mention of Bashir merely inadvertently misstating statistics, and is certainly not going to give him credit for what he intended to say.

The MRC also takes refuge in so narrowly interpreting statistics as "technically accurate" in a way that ignores the broader context. It attacks NBC's David Gregory for accurately pointing out that "the debt exploded under the Bush administration" to play up Michele Bachmann's assertion that the fiscal year 2007 federal budget deficit under Bush was $162 billion, a cherry-picked number that deliberately ignores the overall growth of the deficit under eight years of Bush.

Jerome Corsi arrived in the ConWeb -- and later won a job at WorldNetDaily -- with his attacks on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign as the co-author of the book "Unfit for Command," which contained factually dubious claims about Kerry's Vietnam War service.

With Kerry's nomination to be secretary of state, Corsi has voted to swift-boat Kerry again. Corsi declared in a dec. 21 WND column:

To coincide with Kerry’s confirmation hearings, I plan to author a series of articles to be published in WND, reminding readers of the radical roots of Kerry’s political career, beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War, despite advancing exaggerated claims about his three Purple Hearts supposedly earned as a military hero in that same conflict.

In writing these articles, I plan to be speaking only for myself, in that I am not authorized nor will I seek to be authorized to speak for Adm. Hoffman or John O’Neill, or any of the other courageous participants of Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth.

Corsi went on to tout O'Neill's appearance last month on Sean Hannity's Fox News show attacking Kerry, even though the claims made by O'Neill and his Swift Boat Veterans group have been discredited.

Corsi also makes an odd bit of disclosure:

I need to make clear that while I co-authored “Unfit for Command” and was invited to attend meetings held by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, I myself never served in the U.S. military.

I went to my draft physical in downtown Cleveland in 1968, prepared to be inducted that day, only to be disqualified for medical reasons due to hereditary eczema, an illness I continue to suffer from.

"Hereditary eczema"? Sounds a lot like the pilonidal cyst that kept Rush Limbaugh out of Vietnam. Still, it's interesting that two great conservative champions managed to find a way of getting out of military service.

Will Corsi correct any of the errors he and his Swift Boat buddies made during their last swift-boating of Kerry? We shall see.

A Dec. 19 CNSNews.com article by Pete Winn cites only conservative "legal experts" to mourn the death of right-wing jurist Robert Bork. Winn does not identify any of them as conservative (though he does identify Bork as one), nor does he quote any liberal "legal experts" on Bork's death.

Winn identifies Michael McConnell as "One of America’s foremost experts on constitutional law" and "a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution." The Hoover Institution is, ofcourse, a right-wing think tank; McConnell himself has endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.

Winn quotes McConnell as saying that Bork's death "should cause a lot of people to be doing some soul searching about the way in which the judicial confirmation process is conducted, because his nomination battle was really the first – and hit a new low – in terms of inaccurate and distorted characterizations of his record and attacks on his character." Winn provides no counterpoint to McConnell.

Winn also features Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice , failing to identify the right-wing nature of he and his organization.

Winn additionally features Steven G. Calabresi, who "served as a law clerk to Judge Bork and was his biographer." Calabresi clearly cannot be expected to provide an objective opinion about Bork, and he fulfills that promise, likening Bork to St. Thomas More.

Despite CNS' mission statement to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story," Winn can't be bothered to do that here. There's no mention, for example, of Bork's key role in President Nixon's Watergate-era "Saturday Night Massacre" firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox. It seems reporting such facts is forbidden at the Media Research Center.

WorldNetDaily has published David Kupelian's theme-setting essay from the current issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine, which portrays President Obama's re-election as an "American Tribulation." Indeed, Kupelian is quite butt-hurt about Obama's victory, blaming it on voters being too stupid to figure out the truth:

My 23-year-old daughter called me mid-evening on Election Day, right after it became apparent that the unthinkable had occurred – that Team Obama would have another four long years to transform and dismantle all that Americans loved, all that we fought for, all that we “built.”

“Dad,” she said urgently, “what the hell just happened?”

I confirmed the bad tidings she was hearing on Fox News and explained the vexing electoral math. And then, after dialoguing briefly about the implications of this election, I was moved to more-or-less apologize to her: “I always wanted to leave behind a good country for you and your brother to grow up in, but it isn’t looking that way right now. This is really bad. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter so much for me,” I added. “I’ve lived most of my life in the real America. It’s for young people like you that I’m heartsick.” And of course, I reassured her that all was not lost, that there was hope, and that I would continue to “fight the good fight” as a journalist – though I couldn’t promise what the outcome would be.

Since the election, every right-thinking American has been asking the same sorts of questions: How could this have happened? What do we do now? Is there even a way back to the America of our youth?

As a nation – and I’m speaking now of the voting majority, not all of us, obviously – we have squandered the priceless inheritance of our forefathers. We have wandered off into a far country and wasted our substance on immorality and profligate spending. We mock the faith of our fathers. We ignore the Constitution they bequeathed to us. We spit on the moral code they gave us, on which America and Western Civilization were founded. Our wealth – once the natural reward of the mighty engines of industry and innovation that thrive in a free country – is largely an illusion today, based on debt.

America is broken.

And yet, in this strangely wondrous world of ours, the Good Lord seems to bring us back to Him – back to understanding and repentance, to redemption and salvation – by breaking us. He brings us to our knees and allows us to suffer the consequences of our own folly until, as the “prodigal sons” we all are, we too come to our senses and look for a way back to our original estate.

Remember, America’s problem is not Barack Obama. Our problem is that half of our population, after watching a lying, supremely demagogic president methodically unravel America for four excruciating years, could see fit to elect him a second time. Our problem is that millions of us think it’s perfectly fine to rip apart innocent children before they’re born, and to steal from those who work hard and “redistribute” their goods to others. Our problem is that millions of us think it’s wonderful and proper for men to marry men and women to marry women and to persecute those who rightly point out that this is both immoral and mad.

Our problem is that millions of us – and more to the point, virtually the entirety of government, academia, popular culture and “mainstream media” – embrace the most absurd, preposterous and destructive lies as though they were great and enlightened truths.

Millions of people living in American today are, quite literally, madly in love with lies, deception and selfishness.

That’s our problem. Electing Obama is just a symptom.

Like his boss, Joseph Farah, Kupelian apparently has not considered that Obama's re-election may be God's judgment against him for the lies and the libel and the smears he has caused to be published at WND. Perhaps, like Farah, he doesn't want to face up to his own culpability in trying to personally destroy a man with lies and hate. Perhaps he is too blind to see that the "preposterous lies" are coming from his own "news" organization.

Kupelian keeps up the increasingly apocalyptic tone WND has adopted since Obama's re-election by referring to it as an "American tribulation," just like his magazine:

The coming tribulation in America requires, more than ever, that we discover and practice something Jesus commanded of us, and which he exemplified with his life and death: “Love your enemies.” That commandment isn’t quite as inscrutable and paradoxical as we sometimes think. “Love your enemies” just means don’t hate your enemies – don’t resent them, don’t be upset, enraged, fuming and bitter over their outrages. That’s what they want, that’s how they win – think about it. As the popular Christian saying goes, “Hate the sin, but not the sinner.” Remember, on the deepest level, “they know not what they do.”

Really? WND has been spreading nothing but hatred for Obama for the past four years. It has been the very definition of "upset, enraged, fuming and bitter."

Is Kupelian so far in denial that he can't help but delude himself, or does he understand he has to change the subject away from the evil he and his website has perpetrated?

In a Dec. 23 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham complains that a gun-control advocate likened "gun-rights advocates" to terrorists and that NPR host Terry Gross "explicitly comparing the war on terror to the government’s war on gun rights." Not that Graham can name any actual concrete proposal by the government that would qualify as a "war on gun rights."

Then, the very next day -- the very next day! -- Tom Blumer likens journalists to terrorists:

What similarities are there between a domestic terrorist organization and the alleged journalists at the Journal News headquartered in White Plains, New York? At least two biggies: total lack of respect for privacy and complete disregard for others' safety.

Blumer is upset that a New York newspaper published a map of concealed-carry permit holders in its area, claiming that it "Gives criminals an easy roadmap for identifying homes from which they might steal guns" and "identifies who doesn't have 'pistols' as targets who will likely be less able to resist robbery, assault, or worse, both at home and especially in public." Blumer does concede, however, that this information was already public before the newspaper published it.

So, essentially, Blumer is calling a newspaper a terrorist organization for publishing publicly available information. But you already knew that the MRC is an anti-media organization.

If it was bad for Terry Gross and her guests to invoke terrorism, why is it OK for Blumer to do so, just a few posts away from where his rhetorical device was denounced?

A Dec. 20 WorldNetDaily article by Taylor Rose rather peculiarly touts Rep. Ron Paul as WND's "Man of the Decade":

WND’s “Man of the Decade” award is designated for the man who has, over many years, done the most to represent goodness, perseverance, manliness and character. The recipient should be someone prominent enough to have had an impact on wider American and global opinion. Their successes and failures for the year are to be weighed and considered.

There were no runners-up considered in the category.

What Rose doesn't explain: Why a "Man of the Decade" now? It's not a year ending in zero, which is when decade-long honors are given. It doesn't coincide with anything at WND, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. It has never given such an award before that we can remember.

Given that nobody else was considered for this so-called award, it seems likely that WND just wanted to give some kind of award to Paul before he left Congress at the end of the year, logic be damned.

Tim Graham spends a Dec. 20 NewsBusters post having a hissy fit over the Washington Post's story on the death of right-wing jurist Robert Bork noting his key role in President Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox:

In the immediate aftermath of a real massacre, couldn't the Post back off its ancient ideological hissy fits and acknowledge that firing a special prosecutor -- and the resignation of several officials who didn't want to do the firing -- is not comparable to Adam Lanza mowing down first-graders? Could there be a one-week grace period on overheated Watergate metaphors? Apparently not. When liberal justices die, do they discuss the actual "massacre" of American abortion they legalized?

Is Graham really not aware that the Post did not just invent the term "Saturday Night Massacre" to describe Bork's actions? That it has been called such since shortly after the incident in 1973? It's even in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, for Pete's sake.

The Post was not making a comparison, they were calling it what is has always been called. Is Graham really that stupid, or is he just so desperate to find sometyhing to attack that he felt he had to do this?